The molestation I experienced began around age 5 and went on for years. I remember in great detail what happened, what I was thinking while it was happening, but it doesn’t carry with it the energetic weight it used to. I feel nothing now when I think of it and the one who abused me. I’m not angry, resentful, distrustful of all people. I am, however, more aware of the read I get on people, sensing their energy, and I trust my instincts. I can share in detail an example if anyone thinks it would be beneficial to the discussion, but I’ve avoided being assaulted as an adult many times because I don’t write my feelings/intuition off as an unwarranted side-effect of being abused, something that happens far too often because of common beliefs, and assumptions made, about women who have suffered abuse. Jokes about women with “daddy issues” comes to mind.
My family life was and still is challenging, but that’s life. There will always be challenges in relationships, however, the difference now is how I respond to them. Now I’m honest about my feelings—for better or worse, I don’t hold back—and I’m able to let harmful relationships go. I thought for sure that I was going to take my “shameful” secret with me to my grave and would forever fear my words, associating them with death because I grew up with a mother who was suicidal and understandably she was easily triggered, but my filter broke when my spine collapsed in my late 20s and my truth came out. The physical pain of the disease and subsequent injury were unimaginable, but I know it happened for me, and for those I have helped because of it.
